Baanto – Touching on Social Media and Marketing

Baanto International Ltd. is a leading developer of innovative, high performance, and scalable touch solutions with eight (8) patents filed and twelve (12) in process. Baanto ShadowSense for touchscreen applications solves many of the technical issues that plague other touch technologies.

ShadowSense touch technology is based upon the precise and accurate detection of an object’s shadow as it enters, hovers within, or transitions out of a sensor’s field of view. The object’s position in the touch plane is then calculated based upon the ratio of a fully illuminated condition to the shadowed state for multiple light sources and multiple sensors….read more

Avanindra (Av) Utukuri was one of the founders of Baanto upon its formation in 2009 and is Chief Technology Officer; Av is involved in design and management of projects in all areas of the business, and for the development of patented technologies.

After a couple years of marketing ShadowSense touch technology Baanto wasn’t gaining the adoption they had hoped for and needed a new marketing approach. Early on Av knew they needed a social media presence and his team created social media profiles but with all the additional marketing requirements they couldn’t afford the time and cost of developing a social strategy as a small company.

Av and the team recognized their technology was complex. In the growing world of interactivity and customer experience, touch technologies were often plagued with problems such as the environment they were used in or the number of users and touch points. They needed to solve these complex problems with a complex solution and “their audiences” needed demonstrations to understand the ‘Baanto technology advantage’ so they focused on trade shows to demonstrate and educate potential customers.

Trade shows and other lead generation programs were turned into onsite meetings and presentations where they could share their advantage with executives. They created a comprehensive PowerPoint Av recalls “we were using a 50 slide PowerPoint presentation in customer meetings to present our value proposition. I remember noticing customers losing interest and even nodding off before we even got through the presentation and it occurred to me that we needed another method to differentiate our technology and educate our customers”.

Baanto decided they needed a collection of short, succinct videos to capture their attention and educate our audiences quickly so they developed a series of short videos focusing on a single feature or benefit of their ShadowSense technology. They armed their sales staff with this collection of videos for sales presentations to visibly demonstrate how their technology performed better than their competitors technology such as performance in wet weather or high ambient light or outdoor conditions as well as multi-touch and pressure sensitive capability.

The below link showcases their video playlist created demonstrating the benefits of ShadowSense technology as previously outlined.

Below, Av shares their strategy on the use of these videos.

Baanto followed the growth of social media realizing the value social media could play in their business and the promotion of these videos to educate their potential clientele with their value proposition. Ultimately they needed a social media marketing strategy to enhance their existing marketing initiatives and decided to outsource their social media and online presence to broaden their reach and gain faster results focusing on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn.

They began posting their video collections on YouTube and focused on LinkedIn and Facebook creating a campaign around their technology value propositions as well as recent wins to enhance their marketing efforts and generate leads. A recent example of a LinkedIn post – Ordering your free lunch from an outdoor touch screen? Wait a minute, does the touch screen have sunlight immunity? Baanto does.

Baanto’s social media campaigns are designed to refer users to their website where they are now getting 50-100 relevant visits thru their website each week.

Below Av outlines what they were looking for and why they selected a third party company to manage their social media.

Although Baanto sells through a distribution channel they are targeting their technology advantage at their customers, customers and pushing their “ShadowSense” brand extensively. The concept: When a customer is looking for touch technology, they will discover “ShadowSense” online. When they are ready to purchase they will understand the advantage that Baanto ShadowSense technology provides over the competition and ask for it by name creating demand through their distribution channel and effectively creating a pull strategy for ‘ShadowSense’.

Av believes that their recent growth of nearly 300% over last year is not only attributed to their superior technology but can also be attributed to the culmination of their Marketing efforts and social media presence.

Large or small, every company needs to embrace social media. When done right this virtual word of mouth will enhance your existing marketing plan and stimulate growth.